1. Technical Field
The invention disclosed broadly relates to data processing systems and more particularly relates to the integration of telephony information in a data processing system.
2. Background Art
Today's competitive business environment has increased the importance of customer service. In many industries, the best company is determined by the service it provides its customers. In many cases, the primary interface the customer has with the company is the telephone. Depending on the business, the customer's calls are serviced by some type of call center in a telephone transaction. The call center can be a help desk, customer service, telephone sales or claims. Telephone transactions also take place in outbound calls initiated by the call center.
Recent advances in telephony technology have created an opportunity for improvements in call center operations. Until now, call center employees would answer the telephone and, based on information provided by the caller, access an application on a host computer. With these telephony advances, information about an incoming call is now provided by the Central Office to the company's private branch exchanges (PBX). This information about an incoming call can be used to automatically access host applications to obtain a customer profile during a telephone transaction.
What is needed is a flexible means for archiving the information derived from a telephone transaction. For either inbound calls or outbound calls, information is developed during the course of the telephone transaction relating to the business conducted during the transaction. Information can also be derived relating to the efficiency with which the transaction is conducted. Some means is needed for easily and flexibly storing such information automatically. This would enable compiling a data base of various categories of such archived information for transaction billing and call center management.